Asemics by Robin Tomens (London)

 

Asemic text by Robin Tomens (London)

 

 

 

This post marks the first Asemic Front 2 appearance of British visual poet Robin Tomens. Longtime followers of the project might recall his earlier appearance on the original Asemic Front.

 

Robin Tomens is a ceaseless experimenter in the image-text realm, producing many fascinating innovations and variations. In terms of method, this work uses partial erasure of an apparent "original text" leaving us a surface to contemplate that is in places partially readable and in others wholly undecipherable. In some areas the symbols vanish entirely.

 

One can take the position that this activity essentially uses the "distortion" or "deconstructive" approach aligned with so much current asemic practice. But I want to highlight the idea of erasure as a method of composition in these comments. Ultimately, the text in Tomens' piece cannot be read in terms of conventional, linear reading of symbols and related structures. Even if there are flashes of signification, overall coherence is absent. Yet meanings and interpretations are abundantly possible in the piece. A certain responsibility falls on the shoulders of the reader. This is the paradoxical and contradictory realm of "reading" asemic texts.

 

This type of erasure or fading of text to areas of nothing or near-nothingness has produced some excellent asemic writing. We can now add Robin Tomens' work to the genre. Some of this type of work (I've seen some classic Fluxus film experiments similar to this for example) cause the viewer to squint and struggle to comprehend (in the case of the film) racing, fleeting, fading, squirming and disappearing shapes on the screen that appear to be some sort of writing but that resist coherence.  

 

I hope we will have more work by Robin Tomens on Asemic Front 2 and I am thrilled to be able to share this very interesting example.

 

- DVS